


Wasted Time

by Amuly



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony's close call with Loki, Steve works out his feelings about the man on a punching bag. When Tony shows up to talk to him, Steve comes to a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wasted Time

  
  


The _thump thump thump_ of his fists against the bag was helping. Some. It was loud in the quiet of the gym; the way the reverberations from the bag traveled up his arm seemed even louder, until both noises – external and internal – filled his senses, narrowed his perception as they blocked out all else. That was good. He didn't want to think about anything else, be aware of anything else right now. Especially not smug billionaires, who ran around acting like they were invincible when they didn't even have a _super serum_ , or a _mutation_ , or any kind of protection for themselves inside that thin, small tin can...

So absorbed was Steve in punching the bag off its tethers, he didn't notice the sound of footsteps behind him or the waft of cologne in the stale, sweaty air of the gym.

“Destroying that bag again.”

He did hear that. Steve stopped, pressing a single wrapped hand to the bag to stop it from swinging. He didn't turn around, didn't turn to see that bruised and battered face he'd know was behind him, smiling that insufferable cocky grin. Undeservedly cocky, when what they were facing was so _massive_ , so super-human and he was so small, so decidedly human. 

Behind him, Tony stepped forward, expensive shoes click on the wood floor of the gym. He circled around Steve, leaning an arm on the bag as he grinned a little crookedly. Steve kept his own expression impassive, even as he silently catalogued the swollen eye, the split lip, the cut above Tony's right eye and below his left. It was a wonder his nose wasn't broken, but then again, Steve supposed someone as vain as Tony probably added in extra cushions or shock-absorbers or something into his helmet, just to protect the integrity of his nose. Had to look good for his adoring public, after all. “Can I help you?” Steve finally gritted out, when it looked like all Tony was going to do was stand and leer at his shirtless chest and low-slung sweat pants.

For all his absent-minded ogling, Tony was quick with his response. “Already did enough of that today, yeah? Don't need it to become a habit.”

A tiny chink appeared in Steve's carefully constructed armor as Tony's words conjured images of him from just a few hours earlier, lying unconscious on the pavement as Steve scrambled to find some way to release the stupid armor, to get to the man inside and make sure he was alright. Images of Tony's face once he finally managed that, battered and bruised but breath somehow still escaping in tiny puffs from between cut lips.

“I wouldn't have to make a habit of it if you just stayed out of trouble,” Steve grumbled. He stepped back from the punching bag a little bit, putting his fists up as if to continue with his catharsis. He looked at Tony, who was just standing there, leaning on the bag with no apparent intention to move anytime soon. Steve sighed and lowered his fists. He should have known it'd take more than a subtle dismissal to get Tony to stop talking. He had what Dum Dum would have so lovingly referred to as “diarrhea of the mouth”. Crude, but an altogether accurate assessment of Tony Stark.

Tony shrugged and moved away from the punching bag, but it was only to circle to the other side and peer around it. Steve's lips quirked, even as he tried to ignore Tony's childish antics. To his chagrin, Steve found himself slowly circling the bag with Tony, following his lead. And Fury had thought Steve would have been able to control Tony. Steve knew from within the span of two conversations with the man that it'd be the other way around. Tony knew how to push his buttons, how to needle him exactly where Steve would be unable to resist responding.

Gently Tony nudged the bag into Steve, who nudged back just as gently – if not more so. Steve had had time to learn his own strength by now, between the War and the amount of time he'd spent in training since waking up, but he didn't know Tony's. And in Steve's eyes, Tony was frail, vulnerable without his metal casing. Even more so, it seemed, after today. “Careful, Cap,” Tony teased. “Easy for someone to think you cared.”

Inside his chest, Steve's heart clenched at the expression on Tony's face. It was cocky, and sure of himself, and arrogant, sure. Tony Stark was always all of those things. But barely concealed beneath that well-polished veneer of patented Stark narcissism was a man who never had anyone really care for him before – or at least, a very, very small amount of people. Tony didn't know how to deal with it, how to respond to genuine concern. And that thought broke Steve's heart. Even when he'd been a little weakling in Brooklyn, he'd had his mother's love and Bucky's constant companionship. He'd had the butcher in the shop two blocks down who always gave him an extra piece of salami, in an attempt to fatten him up. He had the nice immigrant woman who ran the ice cream shop and hummed lullabys in Yiddish as she closed up, which was when he'd come in for his free spoonful of chocolate at the end of hot summer days.

Tony had never had any of that. He'd never had a community he was a part of, or even a father who showed he cared for him – apparently, though it was hard for Steve to reconcile the distant, cold man Tony only side-stepped talking about with the cocky, brash, but ultimately caring young man he had known. Tony had been left to be his own support system, a pillar of his own personality. Tony had been left to tend to his own cuts and bruises when they happened, to seek out his own affection when he wanted it and cast it aside as soon as he was briefly fulfilled. He'd been alone for forty years, and had forty more – God willing, at least that much – to look forward to. Alone, supporting himself, with no one to turn to that his money couldn't buy one minute and dispose of the next.

“How's the face?” Steve asked. He nudged the punching bag at Tony again, moving to circle it as Tony started to move around it towards him.

Tony shrugged, then lightly jabbed at the punching bag in an attempt to move it into Steve. The result was the punching bag barely moving off its previous course, and Tony wincing as a hand reached up to his shoulder. Steve sighed and gave Tony a significant look as the older – younger? older? – man rubbed his shoulder. “And the shoulder,” Steve amended. “How's everything? Did you get checked out by the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors? You might have internal injuries.”

Tony made a face: something with fluttering eyelashes and big, brown eyes peering mockingly up at Steve from around the bag. Steve knew it was supposed to be teasing, but the sight of Tony's eyes staring up at him like that still caused something inside of him to stir. “Aw, Cap. Our little frozen wonder-boy is growing up, into a team leader.”

When Steve frowned, lips pressing together in a thin line, and didn't respond, Tony sighed and ruffled his hair with one hand. The saccharine expression fell off his face in an instant and was replaced by something else: annoyed, irritated at Steve's mother hen routine, but also... off-balance. Unsure of how to react in the face of such genuine, caring attention. Or at least, so it seemed to Steve. He could just be projecting – after all, he'd known Tony for a matter of weeks, and this was eighty years in the future. Expressions might change. People might change. Though, for the most part, the people at least seemed the same to Steve. A little faster, a little more distracted, but all in all the same.

“Got J.A.R.V.I.S. to run a diagnostic. No internal injuries. What you see is what you get.” Tony's crooked smile faded a little, voice quieting on the last line.

Steve sighed, stopping in his slow pacing around the punching bag. Tony stopped, too, peering around it at Steve, seemingly reluctant to come any closer when Steve wasn't moving away. For a moment Steve looked at Tony, just taking him in. The cuts and bruises were obvious, but the bags under his eyes were less so. Tony was just a man: not a god, not a hulk, not a super soldier. He wasn't even a specially trained, elite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, moulded for decades to be a killing machine. He was just a single man who, for some reason, decided that the world needed him to put himself in danger every single day against foes the likes of Thor couldn't even defeat on his own. It made Steve feel sick inside: the thought of losing someone else, someone who he hoped to be able to call his friend one day, once he got past all that brash Stark exterior. He had done it once before – managed to call a Stark a confidant and friend. He was sure he could do it again. But he'd never get that chance if he lost Tony tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. If Tony was taken away from him too soon.

Reaching one wrapped hand out, Steve pressed his fingertips against Tony's jaw. When Tony's mouth fell open, all cocky confidence sliding away to reveal the shock and confusion underneath, Steve tightened his grip, laying his whole palm against Tony's jaw and tugging him forward slightly. Their lips met in the middle, cheeks and temples brushing against the sweat-dampened leather of the punching bag. Tony responded willingly, enthusiastically to Steve's mouth sliding open against his, to the first tentative touch of tongue. His lips sucked on Steve's, tongue tangling with his as he tried to push forward, to take control. But Steve held him fast with the one hand on his jaw, setting the pace of the kiss to be leisurely, patient. Concerned. Caring.

When they broke apart Tony started talking. Immediately. A smile quirked at the corner of Steve's mouth as he watched Tony from beneath his eyelashes. “Whoa. Honestly, Cap, little bit more forward than I was expecting you to be, but okay, cool, not that I'm complaining or anything. In fact, that was... we can do more of that. Would not be unwelcome. Wasn't unwelcome. Welcome-ness all around here, actually, when it comes to that. I would ask, but...”

Then Tony was grabbing at Steve's bare waist and tugging him in for another kiss, and Steve let him. They stepped into each other for this one, punching bag no longer acting as a sort of barrier between them. This kiss was hungry, demanding, as Tony took what he wanted and Steve let him. Tony was starved for affection, that much was obvious to Steve and anyone who bothered to look. So Steve tried to give Tony that, mindful of his aches and pains as he wrapped one hand around the back of Tony's neck and the other around his waist. Tony's fingers were grabbing, clenching, his lips hard and teeth nipping at Steve, even as Steve kept his motions easy, his touch light.

Tony broke the kiss this time, licking his lips nervously and breath coming a little shorter as he looked up at Steve. His eyes were darting between Steve's, his lips, his face as a whole, then back up to either eye as the gears visibly clacked around in his mind. Steve let him think, gave him a moment to process everything. As he did, Steve just kept his hands on Tony, his touch light as he cradled Tony's body against his own.

“Okay, okay,” Tony muttered, voice quieter than Steve had ever heard it. He almost sounded like he did when he was puzzling over something on the Ironman suit before battle, fiddling with configurations and talking to the metal and circuitry with an understanding only Tony had. “So, this is... You're okay with this? You're not freaking out? Because honestly, you not freaking out is kind of freaking me out. I mean, you're... you're Captain America. And you're kissing _me_.” The unsaid _Tony_ _Stark_ hung between them, bitter and disparaging tone obvious to Steve's ears, even if Tony hadn't said it. 

“Tony,” Steve said, letting a bit of sternness leak into his tone. Tony responded to it well, eyes widening and head moving backwards just a bit, in almost deference. Steve smiled. “We can talk about the how's and why's later,” he continued, “but for now, can we just leave it at: I've wasted time before when it comes to people I care about. And I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.” He paused for a moment as Tony processed this, then leaned in closer and murmured: “And I'm not 'freaking out' – I suppose you mean about us both being men. You obviously haven't read the files on some of the men I served with back in the War.”

Tony blinked rapidly at this new information, but recovered from it quickly enough. A smile slid across his face, and Steve suddenly found himself as the target of Stark seduction in a serious way for the first time in his life. His breath caught in his chest. Oh. Tony was going to be  _trouble_ . But then again, Steve knew that going into this. And he didn't find himself minding too much: he could use some of Tony's brand of trouble in his life, instead of the typical life-threatening kind he was used to.

“So,” Tony murmured, tugging at Steve's waist to mold their bodies even closer together than they already were. Steve tried not to swallow too obviously, but Tony apparently noticed, because his grin widened. “What you said about not wanting to waste time...”

Steve rolled his eyes, but his smile didn't leave his face. “Well,” Steve conceded. “We probably have different definitions of that.” When Tony mock-pouted and made to move away, Steve tightened his grip on Tony's waist and tugged him back in. “But,” Steve continued. “More of what we were just doing would be good. Not wasting time.”

“'More of what we were just doing'?” Tony teased. “And what was that, exactly? Got thrown around by a Norse god today, brain's understandably a little scrambled, can't quite seem to remember what that-”

“Kissing,” Steve said, cutting Tony off. He wasn't about to let Tony think he could embarrass him. And Steve wasn't embarrassed – not by that little, at least. He didn't exactly feel comfortable sharing his sexual exploits over breakfast with the Avengers like Tony did, but then again, Steve thought of that more as simple propriety and manners. “Can we get back to it?” Steve asked, squeezing a bit at Tony's waist. “Or would you prefer we keep talking?”

Tony laughed, brown eyes sparkling in the dim light of the gym. “Thought you were more of a man of action, Steve.”

So Steve pulled Tony in and showed him how much a man of action he was.

  
  



End file.
